Expired Tags - A non-scientific study
A few days ago, my passenger and I were driving up to Madras and back from south of Klamath Falls on 97. We decided to fill up at the Love's station just north of Klamath Falls. She got out to stretch her legs and when she got back in the car she said, "Check out some of these expired tags on the other Oregon vehicles." Before we pulled on to Dan O'brian Way to enter 97, we decided to see if we could keep track of Oregon plates and tags. We had been down to the Klamath Wildlife Refuge and still had a pair of wide-angle binoculars in a day-pack. She was okay using the binoculars while I drove. This would have made me nuts, as I am extremely prone to veritgo. She seemed to be immune.
It was quite incredible how many expired tags, pre-2024 that she noticed. We ignored tags after 2024, as the months required more scrutiny. These were on all types of vehicles, clunkers to very expensive SUV's and pickup trucks. We only tracked northbound traffic. It was amusing how many expired tags she found. When we got to the Highway 58 intersection with 97, the percentage increased. She found several tags that expired in 2020-2021 (Covid). We were chuckling given the ballot measure coming up.
One of the amazing things we found is that many of the drivers with expired tags were more likely to drive at speeds less than 70 mph, safety driven by expired tags perhaps. Since they increased the speed limit to 65 on 97 a few years ago, the average speed seems to be in the 70-75 mph range. When we got to Bend and heading north to Madras she noticed more expired tags. Not sure what that means.
I wish we could have counted the total number of Oregon cars and come up with a percentage for expired tags. It seemed significant. In the end, we had a good chuckle, guessing there was some association with the upcoming ballot measure.